Microsoft Azure Stack Systems to Ship in September
Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo, and Cisco are hardware partners.
NFV and SDN Only Slightly Offset Costs Needed for U.S. Fiber Investment
Virtualization makes repairs easier but does not eliminate labor costs.
Worth Reading: Moving Computing to the Edge (Again)
The post Worth Reading: Moving Computing to the Edge (Again) appeared first on rule 11 reader.
Complexity and the Thin Waist
In recent years, we have become accustomed to—and often accosted by—the phrase software eats the world. It’s become a mantra in the networking world that software defined is the future. full stop This research paper by Microsoft, however, tells a different story. According to Baumann, hardware is the new software. Or, to put it differently, even as software eats the world, hardware is taking over an ever increasing amount of the functionality software is doing. In showing this point, the paper also points out the complexity problems involved in dissolving the thin waist of an architecture.
The specific example used in the paper is the Intel x86 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Many years ago, when I was a “youngster” in the information technology field, there were a number of different processor platforms; the processor wars waged in full. There were, primarily, the x86 platform, by Intel, beginning with the 8086, and its subsequent generations, the 8088, 80286, 80386, then the Pentium, etc. On the other side of the world, there were the RISC based processors, the kind stuffed into Apple products, Cisco routers, and Sun Sparc workstations (like the one that I used daily while in Cisco TAC). The argument Continue reading
Zscaler Security Integrates with Several SD-WAN Vendors
Zscaler's large data center footprint means it can provide security for enterprises worldwide.
ISOC Rough Guide to IETF 99: Internet Infrastructure Resilience
IETF 99 is next week in Prague, and I’d like to take a moment to discuss some of the interesting things happening there related to Internet infrastructure resilience in this installment of the Rough Guide to IETF 99.
Simple solutions sometimes have a huge impact. Like a simple requirement that “routes are neither imported nor exported unless specifically enabled by configuration”, as specified in an Internet draft “Default EBGP Route Propagation Behavior Without Policies”. The draft is submitted to IESG and expected to be published as a Standards Track RFC soon.
Andrei Robachevsky
We created a culture of visionaries. Here’s how you can, too.
We’re both honored and thrilled to announce that Cumulus Networks has been recognized as a “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking. You can download this highly-anticipated report here, and learn about other major trends in the industry.
So, what’s it mean to be a visionary? According to Gartner, “Visionaries have demonstrated an ability to increase the features in their offerings to provide a unique and differentiated approach to the market. A visionary has innovated in one or more of the key areas of data center infrastructure, such as management (including virtualization), security (including policy enforcement), SDN and operational efficiency, and cost reductions.”
We couldn’t be happier to be recognized, and to us, it means our company vision has paid off. We’ve created a culture of visionaries through inquisitive, innovative and bold leadership, and these same traits are seen in both our philosophy and our technology. As more and more organizations embrace web-scale IT, we expect to keep pushing the technology forward — always striving for a better network.
With 96% of Gartner’s survey respondents finding open networking to be a relevant buying criterion, and with the adoption of white-box switching to reach 22% by 2020, it’s Continue reading
Headcount: The Latest in Hirings, Firings And Retirings — July 10, 2017
CenturyLink and Level 3 shift leadership; Intel cuts 140 workers.
Worth Reading: 5G and Internet Technology
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Show 347: Ethan & Greg Ask Me Anything Episode 3
Greg and Ethan continue the Ask Me Anything series with a new episode that includes career advice and technology conversations about SD-WAN vs. MPLS and the pros and cons of Open Network Linux. The post Show 347: Ethan & Greg Ask Me Anything Episode 3 appeared first on Packet Pushers.
Real-time DDoS mitigation using sFlow and BGP FlowSpec
The BGP FlowSpec extension (RFC 5575: Dissemination of Flow Specification Rules) provides a method of transmitting traffic filters that selectively block the attack traffic while allowing normal traffic to pass. BGP FlowSpec support has recently been added to sFlow-RT and this article demonstrates the new capability.
The following flowspec.js sFlow-RT script detects and blocks UDP-Based Amplification attacks:
var router = '10.0.0.141';
var id = '10.0.0.70';
var as = 65141;
var thresh = 1000;
var block_minutes = 1;
setFlow('udp_target',{keys:'ipdestination,udpsourceport',value:'frames'});
setThreshold('attack',{metric:'udp_target', value:thresh, byFlow:true});
bgpAddNeighbor(router,as,id,{flowspec:true});
var Continue reading
High-reliability OCSP stapling and why it matters
At Cloudflare our focus is making the internet faster and more secure. Today we are announcing a new enhancement to our HTTPS service: High-Reliability OCSP stapling. This feature is a step towards enabling an important security feature on the web: certificate revocation checking. Reliable OCSP stapling also improves connection times by up to 30% in some cases. In this post, we’ll explore the importance of certificate revocation checking in HTTPS, the challenges involved in making it reliable, and how we built a robust OCSP stapling service.
Why revocation is hard
Digital certificates are the cornerstone of trust on the web. A digital certificate is like an identification card for a website. It contains identity information including the website’s hostname along with a cryptographic public key. In public key cryptography, each public key has an associated private key. This private key is kept secret by the site owner. For a browser to trust an HTTPS site, the site’s server must provide a certificate that is valid for the site’s hostname and a proof of control of the certificate’s private key. If someone gets access to a certificate’s private key, they can impersonate the site. Private key compromise is a serious risk Continue reading
Encryption is Crucial to a Trusted Internet
The Five Eyes – Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand – recently met in Ottawa to discuss national security challenges. The resulting joint communiqué noted that “encryption can severely undermine public safety efforts by impeding lawful access to the content of communications during investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism.” The Internet Society believes that this view of encryption is misleading and bodes badly for a trusted Internet. Any weakening of encryption will hurt cybersecurity and individual rights and freedoms.
Mark Buell
Progress update – 10/07-2017
Hello folks,
Im currently going through the INE DC videos and learning a lot about fabrics and how they work along with a fair bit of UCS information on top of that!
Im spending an average of 2.5 hours on weekdays for study and a bit more in the weekends when time permits.
I still have no firm commitment to the CCIE DC track, but at some point I need to commit to it and really get behind it. One of these days 
I mentioned it to the wife-to-be a couple of days ago and while she didn’t applaud the idea, at least she wasn’t firmly against it, which is always something I guess! Its very important for me to have my family behind me in these endeavours!
Im still a bit concerned about the lack of rack rentals for DCv2 from INE, which is something I need to have in place before I order a bootcamp or more training materials from them. As people know by now, I really do my best learning in front of the “system”, trying out what works and what doesn’t.
Now to spin up a few N9K’s in the lab and play around Continue reading
Network Automation Resources for Beginners
Get started on the path to network programmability with these tools and educational resources.